Motivation
The portability and always-connected nature of modern tablet devices has created the potential for financial advisors and relationship managers to interact with their clients in a much more effective way than previously was possible. The cumbersome, time-consuming paper-based experience of old can be replaced by the immediacy of an interactive device with on-demand access to information, reference material and financial analysis.
The Wealth Manager app was created to take advantage of the tablet form factor, and so Apple’s iPad was a natural choice for the target device due to its dominant market share. The app was developed in native Objective-C code to take advantage of the inherent performance and usability this provides, and to allow attention to be focused primarily on functionality rather than cross-platform compatibility.
Overview
Wealth Manager is a proof-of-concept iPad app representing the type of functionality wealth managers and financial advisers would use to manage a client portfolio and sales relationship. Whilst not as complete in functionality as a commercial application would be, it demonstrates how each of the key functions in such an application can be realised.
The entry point for the app is an overview of all the managed clients, with immediate access to fundamental information regarding their portfolio and contact details. From here, the portfolio of an individual client can be selected for analysis using the tools in the app.
Portfolio Overview breaks an individual client’s portfolio down by asset type, providing prices, valuations and performance data for all constituent instruments. Along with a listing of other liabilities such as mortgages and loans, this creates a detailed but digestible summary view of an individual client’s position. This screen also allows the advisor to amend existing holdings in-line and add new instruments either by context-based search or using screener functionality similar to that developed for the Fund Screener and Stock Screener projects for funds and equities respectively.
Risk Analysis provides a range of interactive analytic views including asset type analysis, fund type analysis, sector analysis and regional analysis. Both the overall portfolio, and any fund-based investments, can be analysed using benchmark criteria based on the portfolio’s investment strategy.
The Meeting Notepad enables the advisor to record notes, points of interest and agreed actions against individual clients’ calendars. This saves the advisor the additional work of transcribing hand-written notes after a meeting has taken place, and allows notes to be easily retrieved on demand for reference or review.
The Media Library allows additional reference material relevant to individual clients, such as documents, images and links, to be maintained. Content might be prepared ahead of a meeting or compiled during a conversation and can be accessed when required via the library. Material can also be shared between multiple clients, providing a straightforward mechanism for managing clients as groups when appropriate.
